Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

He thought of the people on the bus, the people who had sat dumbly while Jason spoke up. If only one or two of them had found their voices and backed him up, echoed his sentiments, then it all might have been so different. Luke safe, Jason alive.

He waited until it was dead on 5.30, then went to the office, where the clerical worker, Harriet, had her coat on. ‘Can you check a record for me?’

‘Don’s waiting.’ Harriet got picked up at 5.35 on the dot by her husband Don, which saved the couple car-parking fees. Harriet believed she was overworked and underpaid and behaved as though she was the only person in the NHS with that cross to bear. Everyone else was living the life of Riley and exploiting her.

‘I need it now, really,’ Andrew complained. ‘Just had a referral from surgery.’

She looked like she might spit at him.

‘Just log me on,’ he said. ‘I’ll find it.’ He tried to sound exasperated at her lack of co-operation, and prayed she wouldn’t smell a rat.

‘I’m not supposed to,’ she said.

‘You do it then,’ he challenged her.

She tutted loudly, inserted herself between him and the computer terminal, booted up, sighing pointedly every three seconds, and then typed in a password. ‘Make sure you log off and close down,’ she said, and stalked out, her heels clipping the lino.

Once in the system, he began to type: Garrington, Thomas.

Emma

It was a training day. Something to do with improving customer service and team communication. Emma hated anything like that. You never knew what was going to happen. They’d had one just after she was made permanent and they’d had to play games in a group. Variations on stupid kids’ games like musical chairs and blind man’s buff. She’d read there were places in Japan where the workers had to sing together at the start of every day. She shrivelled at the thought of it.

This training involved the junior staff and another ten people from the Liverpool office. For Emma it started badly and got worse.

They sat on chairs in a big circle and the trainer, a man called Vernon, with one of those funny little goatee beards, asked them each to introduce themselves. But instead of just saying their name, they had to talk for thirty seconds and tell as much of their life story as possible. Not me not me not me. Emma prayed fast and hard, but he asked her to go first. Her face burned and she felt sweat prickle under her arms. Now she’d stink all day too.

‘I’m Emma and… erm…’ Some spit caught in her throat and she coughed. Someone laughed and Emma felt her mind blur, the sense and the shape of the words dissolve. They were all looking at her.

‘Keep going,’ said Vernon cheerily. He had a timer that was counting down the seconds.

‘I’m twenty-one.’ She looked at her hands. She could feel everyone’s eyes poking holes in her neck and her belly and her forehead. ‘I’m from Birmingham,’ she said.

‘That’s great, Emma. Speak up a bit,’ called Vernon. It wasn’t great, it was pathetic. She could feel the embarrassment hanging like a pall in the room, saw her own knee tremor, her foot dance on the carpet. ‘I’m from Birmingham,’ she repeated, glue in her mouth, trying to find her thread. ‘I live in Manchester now, in East Didsbury.’ She didn’t dare raise her face, wouldn’t look to see what Laura and the Kims were making of her feeble efforts. What was she talking about, supposed to talk about? Her mind was blank, full of grey wool. She felt the sweat run down into her bra. The bra was pinching her; the underwire felt like it was trapping her left breast. She bit her thumb hard, trying to find some sensation, something to jolt her back on track. Should she tell them about her tropical fish? Or that she’d seen the people who killed Jason Barnes? Been close enough to touch them. She glanced at Vernon. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘And time’s up! Always tough going first,’ he said, pretending she hadn’t just made a complete dick of herself.

‘And next, Damon, go!’

Emma sat still as the exercise proceeded, hoping to be forgotten. Wishing she could disappear. When they divided into groups of four, she found herself with three friends from Liverpool and could barely follow the banter that they shared in their Scouse accents. She smiled when they did, hoping that would suffice, nodding puppet-style through the discussion about which qualities had highest priority when dealing with customers.

After feedback came coffee. Emma hid in the toilets for most of the break, nipped back and ate three biscuits and drank half a cup of tepid coffee and took her seat again without exchanging a word with anyone.

Then came role play. She wondered if she could fake a heart attack, or whether she’d have one anyway. Vernon paired her with Little Kim. They watched several couples act out scenarios outlined on index cards that Vernon passed round to the ‘claimants’. The person playing the claims officer never knew what they were going to be faced with. Some of the people were very funny, ad-libbing. They could have gone on the stage.

The card Vernon gave Emma said: Irate customer complains about her accidental damage claim being refused .

They sat on chairs in the middle of the circle. They each had an old phone with a wire trailing from it, as a prop. That was stupid anyway, thought Emma; the people who dealt with calls wore headsets now.

‘Okay,’ said Vernon, ‘off you go, Kim.’

‘Good morning, my name’s Kim, how can I help you today?’

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Emma blurted out. The room erupted with laughter.

‘You’re obviously upset,’ Kim managed when she’d stopped giggling, ‘but I can’t help you without your details. Could I have your policy number?’

‘No,’ said Emma and put the phone down.

Kim scowled and looked at Vernon. Emma saw a flash of irritation cross his face before he recovered and smiled. ‘There’s always one,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Kim and Emma. Remember to tell the abusive caller that calls are being monitored and recorded and that it’s company policy to end abusive calls. Next.’

At lunch, Emma left. Better for them all that way. She wondered if Vernon would tell. She got a text from Laura mid-afternoon. Heard her phone go as she was fixing the dressing on her leg. U ok? x

Felt sick x Emma replied. Laura cared; even though she’d made a fool of herself and upset Kim, Laura was still talking to her.

Don’t blame u l8r x

Emma felt so much better then. She got the tub of ice cream out; she deserved a treat.

‘Gavin wants to see you,’ Laura told her the next morning as she hung up her coat.

‘Right.’ Was abandoning a training course a sackable offence? A written warning?’

‘Tell him you had cramps,’ Laura said. ‘He’ll hate that.’

Emma cleared her throat. ‘Is Kim okay?’ She could still see Kim scowling, sense her irritation that Emma had ruined the exercise, not given her a chance to shine.

‘Course. It’s not like you can help it, being shy.’

Emma wanted to collapse with relief. All night she’d imagined a conspiracy, the three of them sending her to Coventry, a wall of silence, or sniggers. An earlier memory scoured through her: a special assembly at school. She was six. Her class had to walk up on stage and chant a poem, something about forests and tigers. Emma was one of the smallest and was made to stand at the front. She wet herself.

‘Thanks,’ she said to Laura. ‘I’d better see Gavin.’

‘Remember – really bad period pains.’

Oh, she did like Laura. She was smart and funny, and she was kind too, like now.

Gavin was okay about it. As soon as Emma mumbled that she’d felt ill, he didn’t ask for any more details. He said her attendance record was excellent and gave her a handout from the afternoon and recommended she read through it – especially the bullet points at the end about good practice. Then he let her go.